


only a kiss

by mistymountainking



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fade to Black, First Kiss, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Steve Rogers, Requited Love, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29304963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistymountainking/pseuds/mistymountainking
Summary: Tony wouldn’t be the first to admit it—he wouldn’t be the third or the fifth or the fiftieth, even—but he’s a very physically affectionate person. For a man who doesn’t like being handed things, he loves using his hands to show his fondness for others. He has his little touches, arm pats, shoulder squeezes, handshakes; hugs are almost exclusively reserved for Rhodey and Pepper (Happy, Steve’s learned, isn’t a hugger), but no one is exempt from being kissed when the mood strikes Tony Stark.No one except Steve, apparently.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 24
Kudos: 398





	only a kiss

**Author's Note:**

> This little plot bunny came to me as I was about to fall asleep for a nap, and I figure I owe y’all some long overdue fic, so here you go!! I hope you enjoy xo
> 
> (stovetuna on tumblr)

Tony wouldn’t be the first to admit it—he wouldn’t be the third or the fifth or the fiftieth, even—but he’s a very physically affectionate person. For a man who doesn’t like being handed things, he loves using his hands to show his fondness for others. He has his little touches, arm pats, shoulder squeezes, handshakes; hugs are almost exclusively reserved for Rhodey and Pepper (Happy, Steve’s learned, isn’t a hugger), but no one is exempt from being kissed when the mood strikes Tony Stark. 

No one except Steve, apparently. 

Everyone—Bruce, Thor, Natasha, Clint, Bucky—has been on the receiving end of that particular display of Tony’s affection. Never untoward, never aggressive: Tony knows how to read people, (“It’s part and parcel of being an effective businessman, Cap”) so he knows when to leave well enough alone, like after Natasha’s been going at the heavy bag for an hour and the angst is pouring off of her, and it’s never anything more than a peck to the cheek or the forehead. Chaste, brushing, affectionate. 

Steve’s watched Tony kiss Thor for bringing him seconds of whatever he’s snacking on without having to ask; Tony’s kissed Clint for beating him at poker, much to Clint’s extremely vocal chagrin; after Bruce, who has been resigned to his fate since Day One, Natasha gets the most kisses out of all of them, for everything from saving Tony’s life on missions to fixing his tie before an Avengers press conference. There was Bucky just the one time, on the back of his prosthetic hand, after Tony finished soldering a plate that had come loose during a fight. Bucky didn’t say anything at the time, but Steve remembers how he wouldn’t stop staring at the place where Tony’s lips touched for hours after the fact, like he couldn’t believe anyone, let alone _Tony_ , would be willing to touch him there.

Suffice it to say, Tony Stark is extremely tactile in his affections. But Tony has never, not once, kissed Steve.

At first he brushed it off as a coincidence. Then it became easier to point to real reasons—their working relationship wasn’t exactly _amicable_ in the early days, and their friendship seemed more like a minor miracle than a natural result of time and proximity and genuinely liking each other as people. But after Steve put those helicarriers in the Potomac, when Tony found him on the shore and bridal carried him to the nearest hospital (Tony gleefully showed him the pictures and cell phone videos later)—when the hard and ugly truth of Tony’s parents’ deaths spilled out and left them both hurting and vulnerable and raw—things changed. 

“There’s almost no daylight between you guys,” Natasha tells him during a sparring session at the compound, a blank observation coupled with a ferocious jab. Steve blocks it, openhanded, and pulls right; ever the acrobat, Natasha cartwheels in tandem with the motion and lands back on her feet without blinking. “It’s cute.” 

“There’s plenty of daylight,” Steve replies, thrusting an elbow out and up towards Natasha’s briefly exposed diaphragm, a little Muay Thai move she showed him the other day. She blocks it easily and uses his momentum against him, dropping him to the mat in a blur of wrapped hands and red hair. 

“Really?” she asks, panting only a little bit as she pushes her bangs back from her forehead with the heel of her palm. “You think so?” 

Steve, starfished on the mat, closes his eyes. “The only reason I’m the only person he follows on Twitter is because the rest of you aren’t on it.”

“Uh-huh.” Planting herself next to him, Natasha prods Steve’s shoulder with a bare toe. “How many times do you think he’s texted you since we started sparring?” 

“At least ten, no more than thirty. If he passes thirty he has to come and talk to me.” Steve pushes himself up onto an elbow and shakes his head. God, he needs to change out of this shirt, it’s so saturated with sweat it’s gone from blue to black. “Anyways, what’s your point?”

“Just observing.” 

“You’re never ‘just’ anything, Nat,” Steve says, looking the woman pointedly in the eye. Natasha shrugs. 

“Maybe so.”

At her little smile, Steve groans, dropping his head like a free weight. “Fine. If you have an _observation_ , say it. I need a shower.” 

“You like each other.” 

“Nat, most people who consider themselves friends would say they like each other. We’re not special.”

“ _Friends_ don’t look at each other like they want to throw each other down on the nearest flat surface and fuck the other person stupid.” 

Steve laughs. He _laughs_ , because Natasha’s not entirely _wrong_ , but she’s also hit spectacularly far off the mark. Even she looks a bit startled at his reaction. 

“I thought I was doing a good job of keeping that under wraps,” Steve says, sitting up now so they can have this conversation eye-to-eye. And he did, really—at some point between telling Tony the truth about Bucky and his parents and opening the compound to trainees and new Avengers recruits together, Steve could no longer deny the fact that he had managed to develop a frankly _embarrassing_ crush on Tony Stark. 

It started small, as these things do: a flutter of excitement whenever Tony’s name appeared on his phone on a text or incoming call, usually while Tony was still in flight between the city and the compound (“ _You shouldn’t talk on the phone while you’re in the suit, Tony._ ” “ _Don’t be a backseat driver, Cap._ ”), which became a blush whenever Tony directed one of those goofy, face-stretching smiles at him, the ones that make his crows feet accordion. Then Tony invited Steve into the workshop the first time he worked on Bucky’s arm, and the compassionate, gentle tack he took with his childhood best friend was like a bit of sun come to earth, a warm, blue glow that melted the hard edges of him in Steve’s eyes until he was just Tony, a mechanic, a man, wearing goggles and an old t-shirt stained and threadbare past all hope of saving, doing his best to _help_.

 _Big man in a suit of armor_ , Steve had called him all those years ago, and yet as he watched Tony bend himself over Bucky’s arm for hours, fiddling and tinkering and fixing and keeping up a one-sided conversation until Bucky decided it was safe to join in—or rather that Tony wasn’t about to spring some murderous trap on him—Steve realized Tony really was, at the end of the day, a civilian who woke up and chose to do as many good things as possible for the world, even at risk or cost—financial, physical, or otherwise—to himself. 

And then he made Bucky, who hadn’t cracked more than a smirk in the months since his rescue and rehabilitation despite Steve and even Sam’s best efforts, _laugh._ A sound Steve hadn’t heard in over seventy years. And when Steve thanked him afterwards, once Bucky was out of earshot, Tony had simply patted his shoulder with a wan smile and said, _Least I can do_. 

As if Tony owed Bucky anything. As if Tony still owed anyone, anywhere, anything. 

Steve was a goner after that. 

Which was an issue, because then he couldn’t stop noticing certain things about Tony when he was around, and especially when he wasn’t: like how Tony knew how Steve liked his coffee despite the fact they’d never talked about it, or how Tony always made sure to keep to Steve’s right when they walked or sat next to each other, because Steve carried his shield with his left hand and Tony knew he felt better with it open. And when they were apart it was almost worse, because then Steve noticed how much _less_ the world was when Tony wasn’t around, how much smaller and duller and just... _bland_ , and he noticed how much work Tony put into making the compound a _home_ , _their_ home, as he fell asleep night after night in the suite Tony built exclusively for him, including a bedroom that was never, ever cold. 

Most of all Steve noticed how Tony kissed everyone—except him. 

Now it seems Natasha’s noticed _Steve_ , which is hardly surprising, but it’s not great, either. 

“It took me a minute,” she replies, unwrapping her hands methodically. The air around them is stale with the smell of sweat and warm canvas, but it’s comforting. As close to an old boxing ring as Steve gets these days. “The only good read I’ve gotten on you sexually was when we kissed at the mall.”

“ _You_ kissed _me_ , remember.” 

“And you liked it,” Nat smiles. “Seems I didn’t get as good a read as I thought, though. Once I realized Tony couldn’t go anywhere without you or your eyes following him, I couldn’t un-see it. Kind of surprised he hasn’t caught on.” 

“I think he has,” Steve sighs. At Natasha’s quirked eyebrow, he crosses his elbows over his knees and sighs, “He doesn’t kiss me.” 

She almost rears back. Almost. “Of course he does. Tony kisses everybody. Platonically, anyways.” 

“Not me.” He tries not to sound so pitiful, but saying it out loud just brings home how much it’s started to wear on him, being the exception to this, the most tender expression of Tony’s affection, platonically or otherwise. 

“Really?” Natasha keeps unwrapping her hands, staring thoughtfully over Steve’s shoulder. Her face journeys from skeptical to wondering to shocked—as shocked as Natasha Romanoff can ever be, Steve assumes. “He _doesn’t_ kiss you.” 

Steve allows himself a little pout. _As a treat_ , Sam would say. 

“And you think it’s because he’s trying to let you down easy?” 

“Isn’t it?” Steve huffs. “What else could it be?” Natasha’s lips form a perfectly straight line, which is the closest thing to a tell Natasha has. “What?”

“I think you should ask him.”

Steve laughs outright, hard enough the sound bounces off the walls of the gym. “Sure.”

“I mean it, Steve. Go upstairs and ask him what that’s about.” 

“I may be reckless, but I’m not stupid.”

When Natasha plants both hands on either side of his face and makes him look her in the eye, Steve realizes with cold-blooded dread that she’s not kidding. 

“Go. Right now.” 

“How do we even kno—”

“FRIDAY, where’s Tony?” 

FRIDAY’s voice springs from nothing, clear and crisp: “Boss is in his suite, just finishing up a call with the Colonel.”

Nat seems to take this as confirmation of something. With a smirk, she pats Steve on the cheek and says: “Go.” 

So Steve goes. Shirt still clinging to him like a second skin, blood thrumming from a good spar and Natasha’s casual interrogation, he walks into the nearest elevator and asks FRIDAY to take him to Tony’s floor before he can think twice about what he’s doing. He can’t help but think FRIDAY is more conniving than even JARVIS was, speeding him past each consecutive floor of the Avengers team building to the very top noticeably faster than usual. He doesn’t mention anything, and neither does the A.I., which is probably for the best. 

The elevator spits him out on the team floor, empty but for Vision, who’s in the communal living room reading a book, of all things. Steve doesn’t point out that Vision has the entire internet at his mind’s disposal and every book that can be found on it; he suspects that, much like he did after coming out of the ice, Vision wants to do things that root him in the same reality as everyone else around him, and reading a physical book is such a purely _human_ act. That he’s doing it in no small part for Wanda goes without saying. 

“Good afternoon, Captain,” Vision intones, looking up as Steve walks past. Steve’s tried over and over to get him to use his name, but just as he insists on calling Tony “Mr. Stark,” Vision only ever calls Steve by his title. 

“Vision,” Steve nods, smiling distractedly. “I’m just—”

“Mr. Stark was about to come looking for you,” comes the serene reply. “I’m sure he’ll be pleased not to have to make the trip.”

Steve keeps walking, offering Vision a quick, distracted wave in lieu of a response before disappearing down the main hallway leading to their staggered suites. He walks past Bruce’s door, past Natasha’s and then Clint’s, wondering all the while what he’s supposed to say to Tony versus what he _wants_ to say, all of the potential—and potentially disastrous—offshoots this conversation could have. But as Steve’s learned over the years, planning out a conversation with Tony Stark before it happens is the definition of a fool’s errand. 

So without a single thought beyond a passing prayer for the best, Steve raises a still-wrapped hand and knocks on Tony’s door. 

It’s quiet for a second, but that’s to be expected, since Tony soundproofed every Avengers suite. But Steve doesn’t even have time to get antsy before Tony’s throwing the door open, a wave of rock-and-roll noise coming out to meet him. Amid rasped lyrics and snare drums, Steve hears Tony tell FRIDAY to turn the music down with a smile, throwing in a pet name for effect that doesn’t make Steve irrationally jealous at all, of course not.

“O! Captain, my captain,” Tony crows, grinning, “What can I do for you?” 

Steve picks at his wraps as Tony ushers him inside with a wave, flicking away glowing projections with snaps of fingers and wrists like a conductor to his symphony. Steve can’t even marvel at the display like he usually does. Every nerve he has seems to have gotten caught in his neck and throat, a crawling, aching sensation that makes it hard to breathe. Things like asthma attacks shouldn’t be possible with the serum, but of course, anything that has to do with Tony could never be _impossible._

He doesn’t realize Tony’s been talking the whole time until he sits down on the bench at the foot of Tony’s bed and manages to take a breath. Tony is pacing in front of him, still dressed for the office, only his patterned tie loosened slightly around his neck. Steve watches him for a moment, listens, distracted from his existential crisis by the line of Tony’s jaw, perfectly shaven but nonetheless softened slightly by age, and the excitable, mile-a-minute way he talks when he realizes Steve’s not about to interrupt him. Steve is mesmerized by his hands, always, but especially when they’re like this—animated, practically dancing in mid-air while Tony talks. Steve spent so much of his life imagining death, wishing for it, chasing it, always living in its shadow; by contrast, Tony is life itself, chaotic and beautiful in all of its bright, flawed perfection, and just watching him move and talk could chase away any memory Steve has of darkness. 

“—wonder what he thought about bringing on War Machine on a full-time basis, but the man continues to be infuriatingly committed to the Air Force, which, as far as one-sided marriages go, I really think he could do better—”

“Why don’t you ever kiss me?”

He doesn’t have to raise his voice for Tony to hear him. He doesn’t even _move._ Tony, meanwhile, comes to a complete standstill for all of a second, glancing sidelong in Steve’s general direction, before launching himself across the room to retrieve a bottle of green smoothie from a cleverly concealed mini-fridge. He doesn’t bring Steve one, because he knows Steve doesn’t like them.

“What are you talking about,” Tony smirks, “I kiss everybody. If anything I thought you’d be the one to tell me I should kiss people less.” He comes to a stop between Steve and a nearby armchair, which he leans against as he drinks, all lazy legs and elbows and what Steve has come to (obsessively) suspect is a deceptively strong body. 

“Not me,” Steve replies, still fidgeting with his wraps. Tony looks bemused. 

“Huh. Didn’t think you’d notice.”

Somehow Steve doubts that. He doesn’t say so, because that way lies bickering, which is not what he came up here for. ( _Of course_ , Steve’s hindbrain supplies, _that begs the question: what_ did _you come up here for?_ )

Tony downs half his drink and barely conceals a little hiccup behind his hand, which shouldn’t be so goddamn cute on a grown man Tony’s age, on _Iron Man_ , but it's Tony and Steve’s just that gone on him.

“Honestly,” he continues, shamefaced, “I didn’t think Captain America went in for that kind of thing.”

Something irksome crawls under Steve’s skin. 

“I’ve asked you a thousand times to stop calling me that when we're not in the field.” 

Tony laughs quietly under his breath, downing the rest of the smoothie and leaving it, uncapped, on a nearby table. “Steve, you’re _literally_ _Captain America_. I mean, I know you don’t love it, but I didn’t think there was a moratorium on it.” 

“It makes me feel like a suit, not a person...You of all people should understand, Tony.”

At first, Steve thought he had to learn how to toe the line of Tony’s ego. Every conversation would devolve into shouting the moment Steve brought up Howard or the suit or Tony’s past. Steve’s learned a lot since those early days, like how it’s really about learning Tony’s sore spots—the hurt, vulnerable places of him that he keeps so carefully hidden—and knowing when not to push them, if at all.

Reducing Tony to an object just so happens to be one of those sore spots. Steve knows he’s hit a nerve when Tony’s eye twitches, his mouth thinning ever so slightly. Any moment now he’s going to turn on Steve, hit back with some smart-ass remark about _who makes your suits_? and Steve rushes to backtrack before that can happen, before his courage leaves him:

“When you wear that suit, do you feel like yourself?” 

Tony pauses, his big, brown eyes widening slightly in surprise. “Kind of? It is a very nice suit,” he says, and Steve has to force himself not to follow the hand Tony runs absentmindedly down the front of his expensive jacket with his eyes.

Clearing his throat, Steve continues: “What I mean is, do you feel like yourself in that suit, or do you feel like the Tony Stark everyone else expects and wants you to be?” 

Tony doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t have to: the look on his face answers Steve’s question just as well. “Armor or no armor, you _are_ Iron Man. Shield, suit, or otherwise, I am Captain America. I know that. But we’re also _just_ people, Tony. We’re allowed to be, at the end of the day, to each other if not the rest of the world.”

The late afternoon light coming through Tony’s floor-to-ceiling windows bathes his motionless body golden. He looks like he’d be hot to the touch. Steve’s never wanted to be burned so badly.

“I just want to be Steve. Here. With you.”

Tony shifts in place. “You couldn’t be ‘just’ anything if you tried,” he says, quieter th an Steve’s ever heard him. Steve feels like he’s _glowing_ at the compliment, something Tony rarely bestows on anyone, including—if not especially—himself. Natasha’s words repeat themselves in the back of Steve’s mind as he looks up at Tony: _You like each other. You_ like _each other._

“Maybe you’re right,” Steve replies. Bracing his hands on his knees, he says: “So if you’re not doing something because you think Captain America wouldn’t like it, what about run-of-the-mill Steve Rogers?” 

Tony huffs a laugh, shaking his bowed head like Steve just told a bad joke. “What brought this on, all of a sudden? I mean if you’re touch-starved, Thor is always good for a bear hug.”

Sitting down isn’t working. Steve doesn’t want to intimidate Tony, he just wants to...get the point across...that this isn’t about Thor, or being touch-starved, or any other rambling excuse Tony can come up with on the spot. This is about what Steve _wants_ , from Tony, and no one else.

Steve stands up and steps forward a handful of paces until he’s barely two feet from Tony. He’s still warm from sparring, his shirt clinging to his back even as the front dries to a smudgy grey. He’s plenty nervous, yes, but Tony can barely look him in the eye. Tony’s hands fidget wildly with his cuffs, his tie, the second button on his two-button jacket, and he looks literally anywhere _except_ up at Steve.

“I should have realized you’d be all about equal treatment,” he jokes, but it comes out flat; he’s grasping for words to fill in for the ones he doesn’t want to say. Because Tony has his sore spots. He’s been so badly hurt, by so many people; evasion is just one of the many weapons in his bristling arsenal.

So Steve waits, breathing evenly, until Tony braves the journey from staring at his collarbone to looking Steve in the eye—only then does Steve smile with all of the affection and patience and admiration he has for this one-in-a-billion man. Steve watches Tony swallow air, a sheen of nervous sweat gathering at the exposed notch at the base of his throat; when Tony reaches out, Steve holds perfectly still, the way a person would trying to rescue a stray cat. Patience. Patience. Be open, be gentle, be soft. 

Tony picks up one of Steve’s hands and starts unwrapping the bandages from his bout with Natasha, over and under and between the knuckles and back again like a dance. 

“I don’t kiss you because if I did I don’t think I’d be able to stop,” he says, more confidently than Steve anticipated. His left hand free, Tony moves on to Steve’s right, glancing up now and then as if to check that Steve’s still paying attention—like Steve can think about anything other than every brief brush of Tony’s long, dextrous, calloused fingers against his hand and wrist, or that sheen at the base of his perfectly arched throat. And then Tony’s words hit him and Steve’s lungs _squeeze_ until he has to actively remind himself to breathe.

Tony balls up the bandages from Steve’s hands and tosses them over his shoulder onto the chair behind him, a perfectly calculated arch from hand to seat that makes Steve’s head spin. Tony crosses his arms in front of him and hunches his shoulders up toward his ears. “Anyways, I’d rather _not_ than overwhelm you and ruin our friendship.”

“Because you think I wouldn’t like it?” 

Tony scoffs. “Please, of course you’d _like it_ ,” he says, a borderline purr that floods Steve with a kind of desperate want that makes the world tilt on its axis a little bit. That Tony is looking up at him through his absurdly long, thick eyelashes isn’t helping. But then that look disappears like it was never there, and Tony goes back to shrinking in and away from Steve. If Tony had sunglasses nearby, he’d have put them on by now. 

“It’s not about that. I’m just...me and you’re—”

“If you say ‘Captain America’ right now I’m not going to kiss you.”

Steve doesn’t know where that came from. Tony gasps and looks up at him like _he_ doesn’t know where that came from. They both stand there for a moment, staring at one another like deers in each others’ headlights. Tony’s eyes are a bright golden brown, and Steve is locked helplessly in their orbit as he inches another step forward. 

“And between you and me, there’s a lot of missed opportunities we need to make up for.” 

Tony’s lashes flutter as his eyes skirt nervously from Steve’s to Steve’s shoulders and then to a random wall. “Don’t tease me, Steve. I have a heart condition.” It’s a joke. It’s anything but. 

“I wouldn’t tease you about this, Tony,” Steve says quietly. No daylight between them, now. He reaches out a bare hand and wraps it around the hard, shallow curve of Tony’s waist, thousand-dollar silk smooth and giving under his fingers. “Never about this.”

Tony’s hands can’t seem to decide where they want to go. He settles for putting them on Steve’s forearms. Steve is acutely aware of Tony’s fingertips as they brush over a protrusive vein; he watches hungrily as the blood rushes to Tony’s face when he feels it, too. “I want you to touch me,” Steve tells him. “I _want_ you to kiss me.” 

“Just me?” 

“Just you. As if you could be ‘just’ anything.”

“I see what you did there.” They’re helpless, both of them: as Steve oscillates wildly between seducer and nervous wreck, Tony looks like he can’t quite decide if he wants to put on the Stark Charm™ to soothe his own nerves or if he wants to stay like this, in this quiet, vulnerable place with Steve and follow it, wherever it may lead. “Were you jealous of the others?” 

“Not at first,” Steve replies immediately, a fond smile spilling out of him when Tony looks up. “Not until I realized I was the only one being left out. Even then I wouldn’t call it ‘jealousy,’ more like...envy.” With the hand not on Tony’s waist, Steve makes slow and patient work of Tony’s fingers, just touching—feeling the battle scars and soldering scars and myriad other workshop scars Tony’s incurred over the years, then tripping upwards over his cuff to run up under his forearm, lean and firm, over his elbow, behind his shoulder; Steve holds him there and leverages himself closer, chest-to-chest with Tony, and wishes he could feel the arc reactor pressing against his sternum. But feeling Tony’s racing heartbeat, the nervous hitch in his exhales—he can live with that.

“I don’t want you to stop being yourself, but I do want more of you for myself.” Once Tony shakes himself from his stupor and settles his arms around Steve’s shoulders, Steve sets to loosening the knot in his tie until it hangs open and Steve can start looping both ends around his hand. Their noses just touch when Steve speaks, his head bent so the words don’t have to travel far to reach Tony’s ears: “You’re my best friend, Tony. I trust you. Even when we disagree, I know your heart is in the right place, and I admire you so much for that—the sheer power of your convictions alone, it’s incredible. And when we fight together? God, Tony. I feel _unstoppable_.” Steve’s eyes slip closed and he loses himself briefly in wondering memories, of Iron Man cutting a fiery line across the sky in the middle of battle, the whine of repulsors and the subsequent blasts...

“Gotta admit, you’re doing wonders for my ego right now.” Tony’s low, wry voice brings Steve back to the present. The present, Steve thinks, is warm and close and very, _very_ pretty. 

“Is that all?” 

“Keep doing _that_ and we’ll see,” Tony says, smiling down at Steve’s hand wrapped up in the tie still hanging from his neck. 

“Or you could kiss me and we’ll know for sure.”

The sound of Tony’s laughter could power a suit all by itself. His happiness makes Steve downright giddy. “I can’t believe I ever thought you were a stick in the mud.”

“The scepter didn’t exactly bring out our _best_ qualities.”

Immediately Steve wishes he could stuff the words back in his mouth. Stupid. _Stupid_. Of course any mention of New York is enough to puncture a hole in the moment. Immediately Tony is clamming up, laughter dying a sudden death in his throat. 

“Steve…” Despair clutches at Steve’s heart at that tone. If he knows Tony at all—and he does, really—that tone all but screams _what was I thinking_. And sure enough, Tony is looking at him like regret is the last thing he wants to be feeling, and yet…: “You coming in here, looking and talking like that...I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a lot of wet dreams that started like this. Problem being, I always wake up from them alone, and if that happens for real this time, I don’t know how well I’ll be able to handle it. Not without putting a lot of distance between us, literally _and_ figuratively. And if we’re being honest—alright, I’m not saying it would _kill_ me, even I’m not that melodramatic—it definitely might hurt more than not doing this at all.” 

Steve relaxes back into his hold on Tony, relieved beyond words. He didn’t fuck it up by mentioning the scepter; nearly, maybe, but not entirely. Smiling, he says, “It’s a kiss, Tony. I’m not asking you to marry me.” (Which is objectively hilarious, Steve thinks, because he has absolutely thought about what it would be like to be married to Tony and the results were _fantastic,_ if his sheets had anything to say about it after.)

To Steve’s surprise, Tony doesn’t even blink when he says: “What if I told you I think about that exact scenario every time you walk into a room?”

“If this is you trying to scare me off, it’s not gonna work.” 

“Really? Because I’ve all but designed a ring for you in my head over the course of this conversation, and that’s enough to scare _me_.” The image of regret, Tony starts pulling away, his tie still looped around Steve’s hand. “I’m super into you, Rogers. A truly embarrassing amount for a man my age. But I know myself, and I know my track record; what I don’t know is if the potential we _might_ have is enough to ruin what we _do_ have. I learned that lesson with Pepper the hard way.”

“Have you considered the fact that I’m not Pepper?”

Tony mock-gasps, pressing a hand high on his chest. “Mr. Rogers! Are you saying you think you’re better than _the_ Pepper Potts?” 

Steve laughs softly. “Not better—and I definitely don’t look as good in stilettos.” Steve files away Tony’s visible gulp for later. “But do I think I might be better _for you_. It’s a theory, anyways, and I’m willing to test it, if you are.”

“How do we test it without ruining it?” 

“You’re the scientist.”

“I’m an engineer.”

Steve smiles, so hard it hurts, and pulls Tony in by his tie. “Shut up and kiss me, Tony.” 

He expects Tony’s mouth in response, given that perfect opening, but instead Steve feels his hand come up and hold him by the shoulder. Not to push him away, but to pause. “Tony?” 

“Sit down,” Tony says, the question mark unvoiced. Steve is immediately struck, as he pulls Tony forward while Tony pushes him backward, by the sudden shift in Tony’s demeanor: a frisson of nervous energy clings to him still, but his shoulders are straighter, his hands down at Steve’s hips, pushing him gently but firmly back toward the bench at the foot of Tony’s bed. The look in the man’s eyes is downright molten, hot and liquid and burning, and it makes Steve stumble as he sits, snared by that look like a helpless animal before an inexorable lava flow. 

A moment’s hysteria brings Natasha’s other words to mind: _Friends don’t look at each other like they want to throw each other down on the nearest flat surface and fuck the other person stupid._

Tony steps forward and Steve opens for him without prompting, legs spreading so the other man can stand between them. Steve’s often wondered what it would be like to be the sole focus of Tony’s attention in a moment like this—it’s heady enough in everyday life, being on the receiving end of that intense gaze, all of the blistering intelligence that lives right behind Tony’s eyes on Steve as they discuss tactics and after-action reports and what the other wants for dinner. Now, as Tony stares him down and slowly unravels his own tie from Steve’s slack fist, Steve can’t even imagine _surviving_ this, because Tony’s focus is lasered in on only him, and it's easy for Steve to imagine Tony drawing up the schematics of Steve’s body in his mind, brainstorming all of the ways he wants to undo him and put him back together again. 

A depraved little voice in Steve’s head wonders if Tony’s going to bind his wrists with that blood red tie. 

“Open your hand, Steve,” Tony whispers, already lifting Steve’s left hand from his lap for him. When Steve spreads his fingers, Tony places the tie, now folded neatly in a perfect square ( _when did he do_ that _,_ Steve wonders), in the middle of Steve’s palm. 

It’s then Steve notices the large anatomic heart hand-stitched in black thread at the bottom of the tie. Against the blood-red silk, it looks viscerally _real_ , and Steve is holding it in his _hand._

He’s still staring at Tony’s heart when Tony bends down to brush his lips against Steve’s cheek. The scratch of beard and mustache makes the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck stand vividly on end; if he had a brain cell to spare he could probably count them. As it is, he’s dumbstruck by the feeling of Tony’s lips against his cheek, _finally_ , and then he’s closing his eyes, full hand still raised in the air, as Tony moves to kiss him right under the eye. 

“Breathe,” Tony smiles, reaching up and holding the back of Steve’s head like it’s something precious he wants to protect. Steve gasps, too wrapped up in what’s happening to be embarrassed; god, he’s panting like he ran a mile and Tony’s barely touched him. 

“Tony…”

“Shh,” Tony breathes, hushing him and kissing as he goes—Steve’s temple, Steve’s jaw, the flat bridge of Steve’s nose, his forehead—until Steve is grabbing helplessly onto the back of Tony’s jacket just to hold onto something and keep from shaking apart. 

Maybe it’s for the best Tony never kissed him like he did the others before now, Steve thinks, and that’s the last coherent thought he has before Tony steps in impossibly closer, enough that Steve can feel his belt buckle against his sternum, and runs all ten fingers through the hair on either side of Steve’s head. 

Wordless, Steve wraps his arms around Tony’s middle. He knows he’s staring at Tony’s lips like a man dying of thirst stares at a lake, but he can’t find it in himself to care, not when Tony’s looking back at him just as desperately, and especially not when Tony’s closing his eyes and slotting those lips against Steve’s. 

It starts out gentle, barely a caress, but it feels like getting hit square in the chest with his shield. Everything stops and the only thing Steve can do is _feel_ —the way Tony’s fingers twitch against his scalp when Steve tightens his arms around the other man’s waist, the way Tony suspends them in that first kiss like a highwire artist. Steve is _soaring_ , his heart beating somewhere up between his ears, he thinks, and the only thing keeping him anywhere close to earth is Tony, whose name he hears in his head like a mantra: _Tony. Tony. Tony…_

It’s not like when Natasha kissed him—hot and hurried and just shy of open-mouthed. This is slow, unbearably tender, and Tony never parts his lips more than a centimeter or two, if Steve could count. It’s _intimate_. Tony applies pressure, pulls away, applies it again; tilts his head left and does it again, a soft rasp of lips, and Steve is left gasping for his return every time. He knows he should show mercy to Tony’s suit jacket, but as long as Tony insists on keeping it on, he’s going to hold onto him with it. God, it feels like his skin is the only thing keeping him contained when Tony presses another kiss to his bottom lip, tasting it ever-so-sneakily with his tongue before pulling away. 

They stay like that for a minute, maybe two, breathing each other’s air. Steve can’t even open his eyes. He wants to, but his brain feels disconnected from his body, his whole nervous system tuned to Tony and only Tony, who stands there and holds him like he isn’t the busiest, most famous man on the planet; like he doesn’t have anywhere better to be than kissing his best friend because he _asked_. 

Steve tells himself he shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed when Tony pulls away, breaking Steve’s hold without effort. The deed is done. He almost wants to crack the joke, _Looks like you were able to stop after all_ , but that sounds too cruel. Steve is caught somewhere between floating and crashing when Tony returns, slipping his hands under the hinges of Steve’s jaw. He must be able to feel as much as see and hear Steve’s gusting sigh of relief, because the next thing Steve knows, Tony is pressing another kiss to the knitted space between his eyebrows. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Tony says, his voice rumbling out of his chest where it’s pressed against Steve’s. Steve grabs him blindly by the hips and tugs, a breathless, needy sound escaping him when Tony pulls Steve’s face up to meet his and proceeds to wreck him thoroughly with just his mouth. There’s that word again: just. Just Tony licking Steve’s lips to get them to open and then pulling his tongue back when they do, teasing Steve into a state of helpless, moaning want; just Tony massaging the hinge of Steve’s jaw with the hard flat of his thumb as he kisses the breath out of him, open-mouthed and hungry; just the feeling of Tony’s cock filling out in his trousers, which Tony somehow manages to treat as an afterthought even as he presses it against Steve’s chest like a brand and wraps a loose hand around Steve’s neck and sets about _devouring_ him, groaning as he tastes and takes everything Steve has to offer, everything Steve _is_. 

Nothing about this is _just_ anything. It’s decadent and depraved, slick and hot and gasping. Tony makes every kiss an implicit promise for _more._ More tongue. More pressure. More heat. More _everything_ , Steve begs with grasping hands on Tony’s waist, the backs of his thighs. Steve is the one with super-strength but Tony holds him in place with nothing but his hands and his mouth, as if Steve were light as a feather and twice as delicate. Which is funny, because Steve has never been harder in his life, straining and leaking against the seam of his gym shorts as Tony licks into his mouth with a hoarse moan that makes Steve’s blood sing. 

And all the while Steve holds Tony’s tie in his hand, smooth silk secure against his skin like a promise that needs to be kept. _Here’s my heart_ , it says, _don’t unravel me._

Steve surges up to meet Tony’s next kiss, and the next, and when Steve opens his eyes Tony’s there, smiling down at him. 

“Stay,” Steve says, lips tingling. Tony, smiling, smooths Steve’s hair back from his face. His mouth is a gorgeous, kiss-bruised shade of pink that makes Steve’s cock pulse and his heart pound for _more_. 

“Nowhere else in the world I’d rather be, S—” Tony starts, his voice gone watery and catching on Steve’s name. Steve doesn’t let him finish—he stands up from the bench and kisses Tony deep and slow, giving as good as he got, and when Tony starts pulling him toward the bed by the front of his shirt, Steve follows without a second thought, heart safely in hand.


End file.
